In your life, you will experience days that will leave a lasting impression that you will remember for ever. I have had the privilege to have a number of those days. They include the day I graduated from SLCD nearly 21 years ago. When I graduated from Uniondale High School in 2000, when my classmates and myself became the first graduating class of the new millennium. The day that I graduated from Nassau Community College in 2002, which was followed by my graduation from Howard University in 2005 as part of the largest graduating class in the history of the institution. What I had the opportunity to do this past Tuesday was even more remarkable.
On that day, I cast my vote for president to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who at around 11:02 p.m. was named the 44th President of the United States of America and became this country’s first African American. What made this moment when I cast my ballot at Lawrence Road Middle School early that morning was I had the chance to share this great moment with several of my peers in Desmond Hamilton, Rashaun Church, Kevin and Michael Powell, Gamal Moodie and Sonyere Brown, who I stood behind line along with her parents to cast that vote.
You see for me this moment was special because for us, we were always taught in our days in school, particularly in Grand Avenue Elementary School, where my journey with my peers began is that we could be anything we wanted to be. Through hard work, commitment, dedication and a willingness to believe in ourselves and not what the outside world views of us that it can happen.
A great example of that is the other person who I had a chance to meet up with at LR yesterday. I caught up with my former home room teacher that I had in my 7th grade year in Lawrence Road 13 years ago in Mrs. Silverstein, who now is the Dean at the Middle School.
For me above all else, I voted for Obama was that I wanted to put my stock in history. I wanted to vote for somebody who was qualified and who looked liked me to help guide this country back in the right. I wanted my vote to count. I wanted my vote to be meaningful that goes beyond their skin color.
If you watched his victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago on Tuesday evening, he spoke about the fact that this was not a victory for him. This was a victory for America. This was something that made the African American baby boomer’s dream of seeing someone who embodied what the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and many others before Obama who stood up and wanted to make the United States a place that was equal and where anyone can make a name for themselves.
This is something that really hit home for me in three ways. The first one was when I saw CBS News National Correspondent Byron Pitts show a picture that he said he has kept in his office of African American garbage workers from Memphis, TN in 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. He said of those workers who were holding signs that said, “I am a man,” that they wanted to be respected and treated like men.
The other point that made me really treasure what had just occurred on that Tuesday night is when CBS Chief Washington Correspondent and host of ‘Face The Nation’ Bob Schieffer is when he mentioned that when Lyndon B. Johnson when he passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that he lost his party in the South for a generation, which in fact did happen. He also said that vice president of that time Hubert Humphrey called the act the single most effective foreign policy achievement of the United States of this generation. What he meant by that is it showed the world how it thought of those that were of different ethnicities and that we should honor that and not see them as a threat, but as an asset.
Now comes the toughest part of this history making process, our country and its new president must deal with the reality of two wars, repairing our economy and restoring the people’s faith in government.
While Obama has broken a very important glass sealing, he must now build a new foundation that will make this country better from where it has been for the past eight years. He has to deal with the fact that Washington will be now ruled by the Democrats and it will be up to him and Vice President Joe Biden to put together a staff that will allow them to make our country better again.
If anything that this election though has taught us is now we all must step up and hold ourselves accountable. Things will not get better unless we as people make it better.
This will be a long, hard and rough road that we are about to travel. It will not turn around over night or even in Obama’s first term. If there is anyone who is ready for this it is him. Let us remember, he beat the powerful Hillary Clinton in the primaries. He defeated “The Maverick” in John McCain. He is ready for this challenge and we need to be ready alongside him.
While he will not be our official leader of the land until he is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, we must now make our stand and be ready for when he and his family make their way into the address of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW in Washington DC, we are ready to follow them and their hopes and dreams for this country.
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